My job is mainly the implementation/design and support of Windows based networks. However I follow with much interest the evolution of open source and specially Linux.
Last week I have got a “new” laptop from work. It’s an HP NX5000, Centrino with 1GB of RAM and 40GB disk, all Intel. The first thing I did I formated it and installed XP. I decided not to go for Vista because of compatibility issues I had with my previous laptop, Compaq EVO N800C. I a couple of hours I had my laptop loaded with XP, Office 2007 Beta2, other work related software, no problems, everything running.
I intentionally left a 9GB partition for a second OS, Linux of course. I took the Opensuse CDs from my bag, five of them (I downloaded them before) I put the first CD into the drive and started the installation. Nothing wrong happened, in an hour I had a running Suse desktop on my laptop, with Open Office and everything one can expect from a KDE desktop. The first thing I tried was to do the updates (Windows habit). The wireless would not work… It can see my Intel wireless but network manager was not connecting…
After struggling for a few hours I gave up. I decided to try another distribution. In four hours I downloaded Ubuntu Edgy Eft - one CD - burned it an booted the computer. Because is working as a live CD I had a working Linux desktop in a few minutes.
Everything fine. Yessss, the wireless was working… it could see my network but hold on a minute, no WPA support. Crap. I took a cable and connected to my router, opened Google and wrote “WPA” and “Ubuntu”. A very nice site came up: www.ubuntuguide.org. I found not only what I should do about the WPA but also all that is nedeed to transform Ubuntu in fully functional desktop. I followed the instructions and get the WPA running in a few minutes.
Now that I know that wireless is working I pressed the install button and I had my Ubuntu installed strait from the live CD on my hard disk.
Next steps were Acrobat Reader (not really necessary but better than the included pdf reader), VMware Player, Oracle XE database, JDK from Sun, Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle JBuilder, and documentation for Oracle XE and Oracle Application Express, Skype, Gaim, RDP client, PPTP VPN client etc.
I have now a fully functional desktop and even if I struggled an entire day for this I felt very satisfied. I could have had all these working in half time on Windows but with no adventure… boring.
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Installing linux on my laptop
Posted by Robert at 11/09/2006 01:00:00 PM
Labels: Linux
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3 Comments:
Robert,
I also had this on my list of useful URLs: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/
Enjoy,
Valentin
Here’s a guy not quite happy about configuring the wireless in Ubuntu:
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/ubuntu/
He says: ” … there is really nowhere to turn, no easy knowledge to accessincluding the Ubuntu Wiki especially when the information must be accessed on the internet .” and he’s kind of right to say that - maybe as a workaround is to have two machines while installing and configuring the Linux one ? Haha !
And while we’re still at commenting Linux, here’s a nice article called Why Linux don’t support mp3 and selected wifi cards out of the box?: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/why-linux-dont-support-mp3-and-selected-wifi-cards-out-of-the-box.html
which includes some how-to on setting things up.
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